This news article was originally written in Spanish. It has been automatically translated for your convenience. Reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate translation, however, no automated translation is perfect nor is it intended to replace a human translator. The original article in Spanish can be viewed at Criterios de los métodos analíticos en la legislación comunitaria sobre protección de aguas

The directive aims to ensure the quality and comparability of the analytical results for all EU laboratories

Criteria of the analytical methods in Community legislation on water protection

Source: National entity (Enac) accreditation14/06/2010

June 14, 2010

Directive 2009/90/EC of the Commission on July 31, 2009, published in the Official Journal of the European Union on August 1 last year, establishes the criteria on the functioning of the methods of analysis applied in the analytical monitoring of the quality of the waterssediments and living beings, as well as rules to ensure the quality of analytical results.

As stated the directive itself in one of its recitals, it seeks to ensure "the quality and comparability of the analytical results of the laboratories designated by the competent authorities of the States members to monitoring chemical water in accordance with article 8 of Directive 2000/60/EC" and understands that compliance with standard EN ISO/IEC 17025 is the right tool to achieve this purpose when it States in one of its recitals "technical operations aimed at ensuring the quality and comparability of the analytical results should follow internationally accepted quality management practices." To this effect the practices laid down in EN ISO/IEC-17025 standard are appropriate ".

To this end, the directive establishes the analytical methods are developed in accordance with the requirements of the UNE-EN ISO/IEC 17025 standard and sets the parameters and analytic criteria that should be used by laboratories in the execution of these tests.

Participation in intercomparison exercises

Another noteworthy aspect of the directive is the treatment that makes the exercise of intercomparison of which declares: "Should ensure that the laboratory that carried out chemical analyses demonstrate their ability through participation in proficiency testing programs recognized national or internationally and through the use of available reference materials." In order to harmonize practices at Community level, the Organization of proficiency testing programmes should be based on relevant international standards. To this effect, is suitable the Guide ISO/IEC 43-1, ' test of fitness by ring comparisons - part 1: development and operation of proficiency testing programmes '.

The development policy of this precept is found in article 6 which provides the need that laboratories participate periodically in proficiency testing and requires that these are organized by accredited organizations or national or internationally recognized organizations which meet the requirements of the Guide ISO/IEC 43-1 or other equivalent internationally accepted standards.

In this regard, the national entity (Enac) accreditation, is long time offering accreditation of providers of intercomparison programs, so that both providers accredited by Enac, and laboratories to make use of them meet the requirements laid down in the directive.

Currently Enac has accredited in this scheme a software provider of intercomparison (ielab quality, S.L.) for the realization of intercomparaciones in water, mud and media sampling (the scope of specific accreditation can be found in www.UKAS.com).

The fact that laboratories participate in intercomparison programs provided information that allows to check the validation of their procedures. Photo: Mario Kaufmann.

Intercomparison programmes

Participation in intercomparison programmes helps laboratories for external information that allows them to verify that the validation of its procedures and its internal quality assurance strategy are sufficiently effective and therefore ensure some degree of confidence that has no bias in the results of the day to day.

This tool is also a high potential for improvement by forcing the laboratory, to unsatisfactory results, to test their ability to detect potential sources of error, as shortcomings in the qualifications of the staff, the incomplete validation of the test procedure or a one-off error in the operation of the equipment, among others.

The importance and the development of this powerful tool of quality control is such that today already no one questions its use and there are already many sectors, environmental, clinical, food, etc., which use it regularly, which has led to the emergence of a large number of suppliers of intercomparison exercises on the market.

ENAC, the agency that accredits

The national entity (Enac) accreditation is the body responsible for accrediting, in accordance with processes and requirements accepted internationally, the technical competence of organizations that provide conformity assessment services, including laboratories for testing and calibration, inspection entitiescertification bodies and environmental verifiers.

ENAC is a declared of usefulness public, independent and non-profit, organization supervised by the Administration, acting in accordance with the provisions of the law 21/1992 of industry and to the Royal Decree 2200 / 1995.

He is a member of the European Cooperation for Accreditation-EA, the organization recognized by the EU to coordinate the European infrastructure for accreditation and signatory of the multilateral recognition agreements signed by 50 countries accreditation bodies in the field of accreditation,.